Theories of Learning

Sep 29

Learning

• An experiential process

• Resulting in a relatively permanent change

• Not explained by temporary states, maturation, or innate response tendencies

• A long-term change in mental representations or associations as a result of experience

Mental representation

Internal images, symbols, or concepts our mind creates to represent objects

Association

relationship between objects, person, or situations

Content

• knowledge and understanding

• cognitive domain

• to know

• to understand

Skills

• psychomotor and process skills

• active domain

• to be able to do

Attitudes

• interests, beliefs, opinions, values

• affective domain

• to believe

• to feel

GI (Greatest Generation)

• Built society after World War II

• Hard times made them resilient

• Comfortable times often lead to weaker individuals

Silent Generation

• Grew up during economic hardship and war recovery

• Known for being disciplined, reserved, and traditional

• Valued conformity and stability

Boomers

• Growth in population due to post-war baby boom

• Problem: Overpopulation

Gen X

• Career-focused, often sacrificing work-life balance

• Many worked abroad, leading to less nurturing of children

• Their children were sometimes labeled as KSP (“kulang sa pansin” or attention-seeking).

Gen Y (Millenials)

• Known as the “Me Generation.”

• Focused on themselves, sometimes seen as entitled.

• Less loyalty to companies or institutions.

• Prone to mental health issues but more open to seeking mental health services.

Gen Z

• Share traits with Millennials but are more politically aware

• Concerned with current events and social issues

• Prefer sensing learning styles—stimulated by visuals, tech, and online learning

• Considered digital natives

Gen Alpha

• Also digital natives, even more immersed in technology

• Adaptive, innovative, and entrepreneurial (especially in digital platforms)

• Environmentally conscious and socially aware

• Open to mental health services like Gen Z

Principles

• Identify certain factors that influence learning and describe the specific
  effects these factors have

• Tell us WHAT factors are important for learning

• Tend to be fairly stable over time = LAW

Theories

• provide explanations about the underlying mechanisms evolved in
  learning

• Tell us WHY these factors are important

• Continue to change
  

Theory

• provides a general explanation for observations made over time.

• explains and predicts behavior.

• can never be established beyond all doubt.

Sensorimotor Stage (0 - 2yrs)

• learning through senses & movement

Preoperational Stage (2–7 yrs)

• imagination, but limited logic

Concrete Operational Stage (7–11 yrs)

• logical thinking about concrete events

Formal Operational Stage (12+ yrs)

• abstract, logical, and critical thinking

Rationalist

believed truth is found within ourselves through reason

World of ideas (Forms)

• perfect, eternal, flawless ideas (e.g., one’s conception of  triangles or circles.

• Knowledge innate—in place at birth

• Role of teacher → not to give knowledge, but to draw it out through questioning (Socratic method → self-reflection).

• Learning passive process

Plato

• Truth is found within ourselves (rationalist)

• Since knowledge already exists within and is simply “drawn out.”

• Learning passive process

Aristotle

• Truth is found outside of ourselves using our senses (empiricist)

• “There’s nothing in the intellect that wasn’t previously in the senses”

Aristotle

Developed a scientific method of gathering data to study the world around him

John Locke

• Opposed Plato (innate knowledge) and agreed with Aristotle (knowledge from experience)

• “Simple ideas” remembered and built upon by “internal” phenomena

Tabula Rasa (Blank Slate) Theory

humans are born with no ideas, only capacities

Metacognitive tool

Combining emotional, factual and skill knowledge into a ?

Jungle, runs

Our brains are like a ? - nothing ? the jungle

Atrophy

There is natural pruning or neural pruning that occurs when parts are used and when they are not used

Auditory activity

Simultaneous stimulation with language and music would cause a more bilateral activation of the auditory cortex

Visual activity

Exposed to stimulation consisting of both pattern and color, increased activity corresponds to the primary cortex

Thinking activity

Increased activity corresponds to the frontal cortex

Memory activity

Region of the brain implicated in learning and memory, hippocampus integrates sensory information along with amygdala

Hippocampal formation

Converting short term to long term memory

Amygdala

Storing house of emotional memory

Motor of Kinesthetic activity

Subject to hop up and down on his right foot, caused supplementary motor cortex and cortical metabolic activation

Brain stem

Primitive brain controlling survival functions

• breathing

• consciousness

• digestion

Think vegetable

Cerebellum

Center for movement control

• Voluntary muscle movements

• Fine motor skills

• Posture, balance, coordination

Think repetitive movements

Cerebrum

The surface of the brain

• Touch

• Vision

• Hearing

• Reasoning

Think Human

Deep learning: through scaffolding

Requires organizing and linking knowledge for later retrieval

Meta-cognition

• Monitoring your progress as you learn

• Making changes and adapting your strategies if you perceive you are not doing so well

Learning

• Modification in behavior due to an increase in knowledge or skills

• Requires the storage and retrieval of information

Memory

• Ability to recall information and experiences

• Neither a single entity nor a phenomenon that occurs in a single area of the brain

Short-term memory

• Solves problems through reasoning process (ex. organizing facts into a coherent essay)

• Combine or “chunk”

• Mnemonics

Long-term memory

• Declarative - Factual

• Episodic - Events or experiences

• Semantic - Words

• Procedural - Step by step

Sensory memory

• transfers to short-term memory

• visual, auditory, and olfactory information

Long-term memory

• People use attention, repetition, and association with past learning to encode information

• encoding happens when information is repeatedly processed in the hippocampus

retained

The more associations made with established learning, the better new information is ?

neuronal networks

Memories are not stored in a single location. They are complex ? spread through the brain’s entire surface

Review

retrieval of information temporarily copies it into working memory for further processing in hippocampus

REM sleep

memories are replayed and reinforced in hippocampus

Structure

Observational learning (Modeling)

• attention

• retention

• reproduction

• motivation

Motivation

• Self-efficacy

• outcome expectations

Development

• How a learner learns

• continuous growth

• situations, environment, people

Dynamics

Stimulates:

• Growth

• Development

• Change

Triadic reciprocal causation

Social Cognitive Theory (SCT)

• Allows educators to assess how to ‘mold’ the environment in order to be proper role models

• focuses on people, environment and behavior

Classical Conditioning

Involves the learning of involuntary responses and reflexes, and how it can be altered through experience

Ivan Pavlov

• Developed by Russian physiologist
  in the early 1900s laid the groundwork for further studies on learning and behavior

• Asserts that our behaviors are changed using manipulation of stimuli

Involuntary responses

Responses the learner has no control over

Unconditioned stimulus (US)

the environmental condition that naturally causes a response

Unconditioned response (UR)

the natural response

Neutral stimulus (NS)

doesn’t causes a response

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

when the NS is paired continuously with the US

Conditioned response (CR)

the response elicited by the CS

Contiguity

refers to how close together in time are the US and CS presented. These must occur almost simultaneously 

Contingency

the degree to which the US is presented must be consistent

Stimulus Discrimination

you only produce the CR at the very situation you were conditioned or the exact CS you were conditioned to

Stimulus Generalization

you perform the same CS to all other stimuli that are even slightly similar to the original CS

Higher-Order Conditioning

The conditioned stimulus is combined with another neutral stimulus, which has now turned into a conditioned stimulus.

Extinction

occurs when we remove the reinforcer from the operant conditioning situation.

Spontaneous Recovery

after extinction, when the animal is brought back in the experimental situation, it will gain emit the desired behavior, w/o additional training.

Counterconditioning

is a behavioral therapy technique to replace an unwanted or maladaptive emotional response to a stimulus with a new, desired one.

Systematic Desensitization

Also known as graduated exposure therapy. Gradually exposes self to their fears.

Flooding

Rather than exposing a person to their phobic stimulus gradually, a person is exposed to the
most frightening situation immediately.

Shaping

process of gradually teaching the animal to produce responses towards a final desired behavior by giving rewards to those that are closer and closer to the target response

Reinforcement(ce)

is desirable and pleasing situation that transpire after a response to increase the likelihood of its relative permanence

Primary reinforcer

something that is related to survival such as food, water or sex

Secondary reinforcer

neutral stimulus that takes a reinforcing properties through its close association with primary reinforcement

Generalized reinforcer

Associated with multiple reinforcer

Chaining

process where one response bring the organism into contact with stimuli that act as SD for another response. w/c in turn causes it to experience stimuli that cause a third response and so on.

Superstitious behavior

sometimes reinforcement occurs randomly, unrelated to a learners actions. Skinner found that pigeons, when fed at regular intervals without regard to their behavior develop odd actions like swinging their heads

Punishment

occurs when a response removes something positive from the situation or adds something negative, weakening it

Reinforcement

refers to any process that strengthens a particular behavior, increases the chances that the behavior will occur again

Continuous Reinforcement Schedule (CRF)

every correct response during acquisition is reinforced

Intermittent Reinforcement Schedule (IR)

reinforcement are given partially or at certain non-continuous patterns/schedule

Fixed Internal Schedule (FI)

a subject is reinforced for a response made only after s set interval of time

Fixed Ration Schedule (FR)

every nth response that the subject makes is reinforced

Variable Interval Schedule (VI)

the subject is reinforced for responses made at the end of time intervals of variable duration

Variable Ratio Schedule (VR)

eliminates the step-like cumulative recording found with the FR schedule and produces the highest response rate

Fixed Internal Schedule or FI

TV Advertisement

Continuous Reinforcement Schedule or CRF

Giving points to student every time he recites

Variable Ratio Schedule or VR

A Casino slot machine

Variable Interval Schedule or VI

The store supervisor who visits the shop unannounced

Fixed Ration Schedule or FR

Free 5 galloons purified H2O after purchase of six.

Intermittent Reinforcement Schedule  or IR

A real state agent whose 40% of his commission was given after 4 months and the remaining 60% given the following month.

Albert Bandura

• Started as the Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the 1960’s, developed into the SCT in 1986

• Traces its origins to The Bobo Doll

Social context

Learning occurs in a _ with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction of the person, environment and behavior

Observing

People learn new behaviors by _ the behavior of others and the consequences of their behavior

Frontal lobes 

personality, speech, and motor development